champu

Do you ever wonder why billvon, kallend, Andy9o8, etc. only respond to you, rickjump1, etc. in these threads rather than responding to, say, kelpdiver?

He said passing laws won't make criminals (people who break or have broken laws) more likely to obey them. He didn't say nothing will make people obey passed laws. So... induce yourself up something else.

I would like to temper that sentiment slightly because there are a couple of different types of firearms laws people are talking about, and only most of them fall into this category of "one more thing to charge the bad guy with when you've arrested him for murder" not all of them. And, for the record, this whole post isn't addressed solely at you. By definition, only law-abiding citizens abide by laws, yes. This means you have two options to affect change using laws... 1) Look for behaviors of currently law abiding citizens that don't cause, but may contribute in some secondary or tertiary way to, crime, and then see if you can come up with something that might help. A couple areas to look into might be people who don't make a reasonable effort to secure their firearms from theft. Another would be people who sell/transfer their weapon to someone outside their family without the recipient having gone through a background check (as frequently or infrequently as this happens.) Even after you identify these things, however, there are good and bad ways to try and address them. Demanding people prove once a year that they lock their guns up via warrantless search or forcing people to sell through dealers for arbitrary fees and aggregating information about sales are two such things that have been shot down recently for good reason. Also something people throw into this category a lot, which is highly frustrating is, "simply having a lot of guns." The proposed law here is, "heap on the bureaucracy and cross your fingers." which is a bullshit way to run government. People in this camp remind me of the politicians in states which try to circumvent and erode Roe vs Wade. It's disgusting. 2) Go full-Draco. Make the penalty for violation of the law easier to convict on and worse than any other crime the person would commit, thus attempting to make a law-abiding citizen out of someone. Example? Mandatory death penalty for straw purchases.

For the record... nationals was in Chicago in 2010. It was in Eloy in '06, '08, '11, and '12. If I'm thinking of the same incident (where the guy landed near the third landing area under a whole mess of crap, none of which looked much like a canopy) then I think it was in 2008, but I could be mistaken.

Everyone reacts emotionally to the terms "mass shooting" or "school shooting." Everyone. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that because we're all human. Aurora, Virginia Tech, Columbine, Sandy Hook, Gabby Giffords... all brutal events that churn up. And there's no reason to shy away from the emotional events when talking about firearm regulations. There are sites that put a lot of effort into painting the picture of mass shootings. A picture a sensible group of people might stand in front of and discuss what might be done about it. Alternatively, if your goal is to do something(tm), you can quote a number 7x the first link and sprinkle in a juxtaposition of Wayne LaPierre and a Sandy Hook memorial for good measure. If you want to discuss mass shootings, fine. If you want to discuss [what appears to be] gun violence amongst criminals, fine. I don't see blurring the two as productive.

So here's the best (worst?) thread through that law I could come up with, making careful efforts not to hinge on the word "weapon."

I think charging people with the act of using a widget in addition to charging them with killing someone or multiple people with said widget as part of the same act is silly in either case. But, DAs will be DAs...

You are a hero for pointing that out. The fascism of people diluting the meaning of words is totally dysfunctional. It's downright abusive and insane. The racism and sexism involved clearly shows the challenge of the extremism in the whole situation. Clearly our civil rights are being abused by being subjected to this. Now that's some high-capacity sarcasm.

When I said "full scope of the enemy combatant designation" I was alluding to situations where the person in question is never brought into the custody of the US in the first place.

While I do agree with Andy regarding his statements about people being either a suspect of a crime or a POW if exclusively subject to US jurisdiction, he's not addressing the full scope of the "enemy combatant" designation in his statements. Perhaps intentionally, perhaps not. His statement certainly addresses anyone in the custody of the United States or an entity thereof though, and that's where I agree with him. It's not without its problems, however, because the very nature of the conflict stands some of the provisions in the Third Geneva Convention on its head. For example the provision that prisoners of war be released at the end of hostilities.

I think one could argue that eight cops shooting one guy who tried to reach for a gun while on the ground having already been shot is a "mass shooting." Maybe we can come up with a dictionary entry as it sounds like we need multiple definitions though... mass shooting [mas shoot-ing] n. 1) Any event where a firearm is discharged or firearms are discharged and more than one person is injured or killed (as a result of the firearm discharge(s) or otherwise.) 2) Any event where more than one firearm is discharged, or a firearm is discharged more than once. (note: no one need be injured or killed.) There, is that useless enough for everyone?

So if everyone involved is dead, and eight police officers shot the guy who reached for a weapon, and he was one of the two men in the first sentence, then there is one really lucky (depending on his proximity) uninvolved man in this story. "Federal Way is a Tacoma suburb," said Seattle when asked for comment.

I think that regardless of one's view of the "enemy combatant" status as used elsewhere, there's really no defensible reason to try and apply it to this case. And, given the way things have gone so far, probably no practical reason either.

In my opinion the tipping point is pretty far out on the limb (e.g. I stumble upon specific evidence of a plan, materials associated with making a device, etc.) I really couldn't tell you what someone would have to say/write to get me to notify the FBI if all they did was say/write something. Hopefully people would at least feel out a mutual acquaintance or two regarding their hunch before contacting authorities in that case. That said, something this recent incident got me thinking about are the FBI sting operations where they go after someone they think might be dangerous and see if they can get them to park and try to detonate a fake VBIED. Given the alleged tip-off, this might have been a missed opportunity for such an operation.

Usually when I fly it's back and forth across the US. When I'm flying East I try and sit starboard and when flying west I sit Port. That way between my closed window shutter and less light coming in from the opposite side of the airplane (where unfortunately I can't control the shutters), I get the darkest possible environment. When flying at night I don't care which side I'm on. I much prefer window seats as I virtually never get up during flights and I don't want anyone asking me to move so they can get to the aisle. I also always try and sit as far forward as possible because of how slow people are to disembark. I'm 5'9" and I'm not fat, so space usually isn't a problem.

Well, that's one anecdote. I think we can agree that the idea of a firearms safety course is a good one. You can agree with that and still maintain that courses and permitting can, and have been, intentionally used as de facto bans. As I've said before, BASE jumping in national parks is not illegal, you just have to get a permit first. Imagine going to vote, you get there, and they say, "Well, everything is in order for you to vote, but we're out of ballots, sorry." There was an interesting story posted here (a year ago today, as it happens) that didn't get a whole lot of discussion, but illustrates the problem with what sounds like a simple "common-sense" regulation. And you can ask, "suppose all of those problems were addressed, then would you be for a course/test/demonstration of safety proficiency?" and I'd say, "fine."

That's a possibility, certainly. Maybe the polls were inaccurate... In scientific methodology when you get a result that doesn't align with your expectations you go back and check to see if you messed up something in your initial expectations. If you find that mistake (in this case it'd be the '90% of people' bits then you can run with the result you've got... You could probably say 'see - Government works!' However if you go back and check and find out that that the polls WERE accurate, what then? What if 90% of the people are for more stringent controls but the system that's in place allows for Senators to be cajoled, bribed, blackmailed, forced, persuaded or otherwise convinced to act against those indicators for political expediency - what then? We have a disparity between expectations and results. Something is wrong somewhere in the system... We should probably find out what. If 90% of people polled said that they wanted "whatever it is that gets proposed in the Senate, pass it, I'm sure it's fine," then that would be highly disconcerting, and it would make the results of this senate vote quite alarming indeed, but I don't think that's what polls show.

Guns were originally designed to kill people and marriage was originally between a man and a woman.

You collapsed "firearm" down to "handgun" in a diliberate attempt to make your argument stronger, so yes, this was a strawman. Textbook, frankly. And I will demonstrate one of my own points right now by stating that I'm not a big fan of handguns myself, so I don't feel as compelled to defend them. But note, US Senators and state legislatures didn't bring Handgun Ban Bills forward after the Virginia Tech shootings, but even the president started talking about an Assuault Weapon Ban after Newtown.

This thread was not my idea and I agree that it is not a good place to try to draw a parallel. I do not think that anyone who thinks the thread is silly is automatically a gun-o-phobe. My posts here have been an attempt to not throw the baby out with the bath water. Re-reading them I agree they do not conform to my usual standards. I had two points. 1) "depends on who's buying it" is damn right when talking about "primary purpose," so regulation should focus on people and not things (and I think many here would agree with that) 2) If a person is for making something difficult/impossible to obtain or do, how likely it is to be used in an illegal way is part of their calculus, but so is how likely the person in question is to want to obtain or do that thing. So (against my better judgement trying to salvage the original analogy) if I think pressure cookers don't do food justice and I've choosen to never cook my food that way... and it happens that pressure cookers make good bombs... then why would I not want them heavily regulated? Try and make an argument for pressure cookers to bring to someone with my stance.

btw, when you write things like "register/ban" you're falling into the trap that it's all just a package deal. After Newtown, people very casually listed "universal background checks, assault weapon bans, and magazine bans" as all being "common-sense" measures, stating how it's all just a blanket approach that all needs to be done together because no one thing will stop everything. Thankfully a lot of people here, and more importantly in congress, don't think very highly of the bans, and would really just be happy with finding a workable fix to the background check situation. Sadly, not all state legislatures are being as cool-headed. The more people that make their arguments for/against these things inseverable, the more polarized the argument gets and the more "common-stupidity" measures we're going to end up with.

depends on who's buying it. Indeed. If someone had a sporting clays shotgun, you could rightfully argue that its primary purpose was to shoot clay targets. That's what the gunsmith designed it to do best, and that's what the vast majority of people who buy them will only ever use them for. The VP, however, might use it to fire shots into the air in an attempt to scare off an intruder, even though now he's out of rounds. A hunter might take it out to shoot ducks, even though it's a bit heavy to be lugging around meadows all morning. Or, someone might commit murder with it, even though it's highly conspicuous and it would be illegal to do so. The primary purpose of a pressure cooker is to cook food. Some people might use it to help them make drugs, even though boiling things other than water in it is dangerous. Some people might make a bomb out of it, even though the bomb might be cumbersome and it would be illegal to do so. The point is, neither a firearm nor a pressure cooker has a primary purpose of "committing violent crimes/murdering people" so taking an approach to either that goes in assuming that's the case is silly. It does take a much less active imagination to picture someone using a firearm to commit a crime, but an important thing to remember about those that wish to erode law-abiding citizens' access to certain firearms, is that it takes a much more active imagination for them to picture themselves ever wanting to purchase one.

Well done! What yardage were you shooting from? 40yds. with mod choke. I use full choke beyond 40. What the hell are you doing 40 yards behind the house?

Interesting choice not to hear the case. If the Illinois ruling is appealed to SCOTUS and not heard or heard and upheld it will in effect be saying that, while you can't prohibit certain things, you can require a permit and then summarily deny all permit requests. Sorta like BASE jumping in national parks.

Once you set aside taxpayer money for arms procurement, wouldn't anyone want to get the most, biggest, and strongest for it? I don't think many people want the least, shittiest arms for the government regardless of how much they feel is an appropriate amount of tax money to spend on it. OTOH, they also claim to want to defend themselves against said government that they have armed to the teeth, when it turns tyrannical. Why don't you figure out what you're trying to say with this thread and get back to us. It's pretty clear to anyone who knows what a paradox is. Since your OP is not an example of a paradox, I suppose I should conclude we're in agreement over our last two posts.